Yahoo CEO Ignores Critics, Talks Mobile

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is no stranger to headlines. Buzz around Yahoo laying off hundreds, shutting down its online magazines and Mayer’s dispute with investors left attendees of yesterday’s developer conference wondering what the company will reveal.

San Francisco is all about developers this week. Three conferences happened around the city, starting off with DeveloperWeek, then Yahoo's third annual Mobile Developer Conference and the Mobile Growth Summit on the same days.

About 1,000 attendees gathered at Yahoo’s free conference yesterday to hear Mayer and Simon Khalaf, CEO of Flurry, keynote on the state of mobile. Yahoo acquired mobile analytics company Flurry for $270 million in 2014.

At least one attendee who visited all three conferences said breakfast this year (half muffins, fruit, breakfast bars) seemed scanty, compared to previous years. After announcements, the afternoon was spent on use cases with Yahoo’s mobile partners — Cheetah Mobile, PicCollage, Perfect Corp and a few others.

According to Mayer, mobile growth in 2015 hit new heights. Super Bowl Sunday saw the highest mobile engagement than any other Super Bowl in the past. Flurry tracked more than 700 million mobile app sessions in the US during the Super Bowl game.

With the exception of less than two minutes during halftime show, viewers were on mobile every second of the Super Bowl, Mayer said.

A booming video introducing Flurry’s Khalaf boasted its 250,000 developers who use Flurry to build and measure some 800,000 apps. The average time we now spend on mobile is about four hours a day, Khalaf said.

Flurry Explorer is the new analytics dashboard with enhanced filtering, allowing developers to track everything, from users’ gender, cohorts, funnels and segments, in seconds. The new analytics tool also promises dynamic charting and comparison tools for better understanding of audience behavior.

Flurry product managers also revealed its new mobile app for analytics, available as of Thursday on iOS and Android. The app offers real-time metrics and allows for easy sharing, such as sharing a data chart on Slack with colleagues.

They also built Yodel TV, where developers can access all the Flurry analytics for tvOS apps.

Another part of Flurry’s new developments, Yahoo App Publishing introduced direct ad serving to up the monetizing game. According to Flurry, developer partners want to form more direct relationships with advertisers, extending into native ads, apps and videos. Direct ad serving allows users to traffic and track campaigns with advertisers, looking at specific data like ad minutes or frequency by days or hours.

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